"Hey, Tubbs, you ever consider a career in Southern law enforcement?" [chuckles] "Maybe. Maybe..."

Miami Vice is a crime drama Buddy Cop Show which ran on NBC from 1984-1989. Created by former Hill Street Blues writer and producer Anthony Yerkovich, the series drew much of its premise from real-life laws allowing property seized from drug dealers to be used in drug enforcement. In other words, if a drug dealer has a Cool Car or Cool Boat, and that drug dealer is jailed, the police can use his stuff. These laws gave the producers a perfectly valid excuse for putting their public-servant characters in Ferraris and Armani suits.

The series stars Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as James "Sonny" Crockett and Ricardo "Rico" Tubbs, two pastel-colored officers of Miami-Dade PD's vice squad, as they chase down drug lords, pimps, renegade FBI agents, weapon smugglers, militia members, and other badly-dressed criminals whose downfall is to be ignorant of Miami's worst-kept secret: psst, these two are actually cops.

The series was notable for its use of contemporary popular music, and for being one of the first shows regularly broadcast in stereo. By design, the show often resembled a music video rather than a standard Police Procedural. Extended musical sequences were common, often featuring little or no dialogue and numerous images of cars, boats, guns, nightlife, and scenery. The show was filmed on location in Miami, and made use of a distinctive color palette, mostly white and pastels.

Miami Vice was one of the most influential (perhaps the most influential) TV series of all times when it comes to style and fashion. Crockett's white-suit-over-t-shirt style, Perma-Stubble, and Ray-Ban sunglasses all became fashion trends. His lack of socks did not. Even in the 2010's many people's ideas of the 80's come straight from the series (which explains why many people tend to have a rather exaggerated idea of the period — not everybody dressed like the pimps and drug dealers of the series).

Tubbs occasionally grows one of these as a disguise. Might possibly qualify as Beard of Evil since he does it to pose as a drug dealer.

Zito also grows a massive beard during the second season.

Badass Boast: From the episode "Glades". A drug dealer has a shotgun to the head of an innocent young girl, taunting Crockett that all he needs to do is twitch and the girl is dead. Crockett's response? "Maybe...you won't even...twitch..." Then he shoots the drug dealer in the head. He doesn't twitch. This scene was recreated note for note in The Movie.

Battle Couple: Of the few times they're paired together, Tubbs and Valerie are this.

Being Good Sucks: Several instances in the later seasons (which contributes to Crockett and Tubbs eventually quitting the force) show that, for all their attempts to do the right thing, it often results in the villains getting off on technicalities and innocent people being caught in the crossfire.

Beleaguered Childhood Friend: On many occasions, the detectives are approached by an old friend who has gotten themselves in trouble. Often the trouble involves illegal activities on the part of the friend. It usually ends bad.

The repeated moments when one of the heroes finds out an old friend, love interest, or a colleague they used to trust has gone bad.

In the acclaimed episode "Out Where The Buses Don't Run," the detectives are approached by a former colleague, Hank Weldon, who says he is on the tracks of a drug lord who disappeared five years ago. Weldon seems mentally unstable and fixated on said drug lord. At the end, it turns out that Weldon has murdered the drug lord and kept his body hidden for five years.

CIA Evil, DEA Good: In Southeast Asia, Castillo's DEA team went up against a drug-trafficking general with CIA connections. The DEA tried to ambush an opium shipment, but the CIA had sold them out, and they got slaughtered.

Clip Show: "A Bullet for Crockett" has most of the characters reminiscing about past missions when Crockett is shot during a drug bust gone bad.

The Testarossa that is given to Crockett in "Stone's War" is hinted to be the same one owned by Irish mobster Bunny Berrigan in the preceding episode, "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" (as Crockett comments that it has "new paint" when he first sees it).

In "Stone's War", Crockett says that he can't play Stone's recording of the massacre in Nicaragua because he doesn't own a television. Ten episodes later, in "Forgive Us Our Debts", Crockett finally buys a small television for the bedroom on his boat.

"A Bullet for Crockett" begins with a scene reminiscent of the pilot, where (in both instances) Crockett and Tubbs drive to an undercover drug deal as Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight" plays in the background.

In "Deliver Us From Evil", Crockett's locker has a photograph with him and his college friend Robbie, who appeared in the second-season episode "Buddies".

Cool Boat: For the first two seasons, Sonny Crockett lives on an Endeavour 40 sailboat, which is replaced by a Endeavour 42 sailboat for the rest of the series run. He also pilots a Chris Craft Stinger 390 in the first season and a Wellcraft 38 Scarab KV afterwards.

Crockett drives a Ferrari Daytona Spyder 365 GTS/4 during the first two seasons and a white 1986 Ferrari Testarossa later. The first Ferrari was a replica (for budget reasons) which was replaced by the real article at the insistence of the manufacturer.

Ricardo Tubbs drives a 1964 Cadillac Coupe de Ville Convertible.

Cool Guns: Given that Michael Mann was a producer, this is a given. Special mention should be given to Crockett's 10mm Bren Ten pistol from the first two seasons, two of which were custom built (and rechambered in .45 since there were no 10mm blanks in 1984) for the show. Despite the Bren Ten being an indisputable failure, it still has a cult following due to its presence on Miami Vice, and the custom finish job used on the Bren Tens in the show (Mann had the slide of both guns given a hard chrome finish to make them more visible on camera during night-time scenes) has even come to be known as "Miami Vicing".

Creator Cameo: Jan Hammer (the show's composer) appears as a wedding musician in the episodes "One Way Ticket" and the fourth-season episode "Like a Hurricane".

Criminal Amnesiac: Crockett loses his memory while undercover as a drug dealer. As a result, he becomes the drug dealer and proceeds to take over much of the Miami market. But in the process he shoots Tubbs when his ex-partner tries to force his memories back. When Crockett does regain his memory and tries to return to the vice squad, he's arrested. It takes a convoluted plot of defeating an Ax-Crazy criminal and saving Tubbs' life to return Crockett to the force.

Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster: Played straight and deconstructed. The show explores the glamourous side of the Miami underworld, and part of the reason Crockett and Tubbs are so cool is that they play along in this world. On the other hand, we often see the less glamorous consequences of a criminal lifestyle and how cruel and ruthless the underworld is.

Deep South: A few episodes whose plots require that the protagonists to travel outside of Miami involve them dealing with such crises as a turf war between redneck families in the Everglades. Crockett himself is a very stereotypical southerner at times.

Dirty Cop: One of the show's themes was how the "lure of easy money" surrounding the drug traffic could turn even your closest friends on the police force into backstabbing criminals.

Downer Ending: More the rule than the exception. This show was one of the first where the good guys didn't always win.

Drugs Are Bad: A persistent theme of the series is that not only does the drug trade have a lot of death and destruction in its wake, but the individual drug users are led to a criminal lifestyle by their addiction.

The first few episodes form a conventional Five-Episode Pilot, and had a large number of elements (like the character of Lieutenant Lou Rodriguez, who was killed off after his actor expressed displeasure living in Miami and wanted out) that seem odd in comparison to later episodes. Especially the musical montages, which used to take up extended airtime and would occur for the duration of the song instead of a short clip in later episodes and seasons. These same episodes also feature a really dodgy, prototype remix of Miami Vice Theme in their opening credits, which is missing the main guitar line and just sounds like a lot of aimless drumming.

Zito and Switek's schemes used to take up entire segments during certain episodes in the first season, but this was eventually minimalized and removed altogether in later seasons.

Several of the early episodes had scenes where the team planned their operations together - later episodes skipped this setup and went directly to the execution of the plan.

The '80s: One of theTrope Codifiers. The show defined many tropes - music, fashion, attitudes - that people link to that decade.

'80s Hair: Most of the women who appeared on the show, notably guest star Pam Grier as seen in this photo◊. The men would also have distinctive 80's hair styles, up to and including the Mullet.

What happens to some of the good cops who don't go crooked: they go mad instead.

Partly explains what happens to Crockett when he gets hit with amnesia: his second wife had just been killed by a Serial Killer seeking revenge on Crockett, and the aftershock of what happened made it easy for him to forget when the time came.

Hidden Depths: Consciously and intentionally averted by Crockett, who in spite of being college-educated and having the occasional heartfelt opinion needs to come across as shallowly as possible for the sake of his job, sanity, and keeping up appearances. In "Definitely Miami", he immediately backtracks on realizing that he's referenced Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, to Tubbs' surprise.

Hooker with a Heart of Gold: If the crew isn't bringing down drug dealers, they're investigating sex crimes usually involving prostitutes. Some of their informants on the drug cases are call girls and streetwalkers.

Impractically Fancy Outfit: Two of the most iconic long-sleeved blazers on television are worn by characters who run around in high-stress situations in South Florida's legendarily sweltering climate.

The Informant: Crockett and Tubbs regularly called upon Izzy "The Snitch" Moreno and Neville "Noogie" Lamont to get information on whatever big plot was going down. The two cops treated the latter like some unpleasant form of fungus, while the former was treated like a favored pet. Izzy once even helped the two cops out while Izzy was in the middle of committing another crime (the crime was straight burglary... they're Vice cops... they cut him a break).

Interpol Special Agent: More or less averted by the Interpol agent in "French Twist." She flies to Miami, hot on the trail of an international criminal... and gives the detectives advice. At least until she turns out to be a French government assassin sent because He Knows Too Much.

Magical Computer: The crazed ex-cop Hank in "Out Where The Buses Don't Run" works with a computer to track the "missing" drug lord that Hank is obsessed with catching. The computer "Lorraine" (named for Hank's ex-wife) operates with a mind and personality of its own, and does things that computers in 1985 really didn't do.

Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Crockett's investigation of the circumstances behind the death of his former partner in "Forgive Us Our Sins" results in a convicted and scheduled-for-execution killer to be mistakenly freed from Death Row. This comes back to bite him a season later when the killer comes back and shoots Crockett's wife, Caitlin, leading to Crockett's breakdown and slide into his alter ego, Burnett.

Only in Miami: Some episodes were loosely based on some of the crazier things that happened in South Florida.

The Ferraris driven by Crocket and Tubbs. The first one was a replica; when the Ferrari company found this out, they offered to lend a real one if the fake was disposed of. It was, in a spectacular case of External Combustion.

Also applies to Crockett's handguns in the the television series, namely the Bren Ten for the first two seasons, and the Smith & Wesson 645 for the rest of the series.

Rape as Drama: Several episodes dealt with associates of the Vice team being raped by the villain(s), prompting Crockett, Tubbs, Gina and/or Trudy to go after them in revenge.

Due to the network switching up the order of certain episodes throughout the series, characters and/or props change their appearance radically from one episode to another.

Infamously, Crockett is driving around in his Ferrari Daytona (and using it for cover in a shootout) in the third-season episode "El Viejo", seven episodes after it was destroyed by an arms dealer and replaced with the Testarossa. This was due to the fact that "El Viejo" was originally planned to be the third-season premiere, but was pushed farther into the season and replaced with a more action-packed opener.

Zito's beard disappears and reappears at random throughout the second season, due to the running order of the episodes being changed.

Shoot Everything That Moves: In several episodes, perhaps most notably "Freefall," the series finale. When faced with the fact that General Borbon may walk without testifying about the cartel due to political corruption, Crockett and Tubbs confront the dictator in a running firefight, killing his guards to a man and blowing up Borbon's departing seaplane.

Several episodes of the show "borrowed" plots from various movies, such as High Noon or The Trouble with Harry. Season 3's "Shadow in the Dark" was pretty much one giant allusion to Manhunter, which Michael Mann himself directed.

In Season 2's "Out Where the Buses Don't Run", Weldon's computer is named after his ex-wife, Lorraine. It also happened to be the name of the Amiga prototype that appeared at the 1984 Consumer Electronics Show. The Amiga prototype took its name from the motherboard, which was named Lorraine, after the company president's wife.

Soundtrack Dissonance: While the show's soundtrack and Music Video Syndrome style are among its main draws, the series is rife with out-of-place examples that can actually be pretty jarring: such as cheery pop music playing as the theme to a violent murder, or an angsty ballad playing during a mellow driving scene.

Take My Hand: In the Burnett arc, Sonny redeems himself to Tubbs by showing up in time to do this.

Titled After the Song: In the middle of the show's first season, former Eagles guitarist Glenn Frey released "Smuggler's Blues", a song about cocaine trafficking. The producers of the show immediately jumped on it, and not only titled the resultant episode "Smuggler's Blues", but they based the storyline on the lyrics of the song and cast Glenn Frey as Jimmy the Bush Pilot.

True Companions: One of the reasons why none of the Miami Vice crew turn corrupt except for when Crockett loses his identity. And even then, the bond of friendship is what brings him back into the fold.

"Golden Triangle, Part 1": What starts out as a typical episode involving a jewellery theft takes a sharp turn and becomes a showcase for Castillo's Hidden Depths, culminating in the most cinematic fight of the series (between Castillo and a suspect) up to that point.

"Sons And Lovers": Tubbs' former love interest, Angelina Calderone, returns - with a baby in tow, and one she says belongs to him. Angelica's brother, also of the Calderone family, comes to Miami looking for revenge...and ends up rigging Angelina to a car bomb that kills her and makes Tubbs think his child has died as well.

"Down For The Count, Part 1": An undercover operation involving a corrupt boxing manager turns horribly tragic when Zito is killed and made to look like he overdosed on drugs.

"Mirror Image", Sonny is caught in a massive explosion that leads to him developing amnesia and slipping into the role of his alter-ego, Sonny Burnett. He turns traitor on the Vice team and begins working for a drug cartel, finally culminating in him shooting Tubbs after the latter tries to reason with him.

Elvis the alligator stops appearing by the fourth season, and is never referenced or seen again, with his fate left unanswered after Crockett quits the force at the end of the series.

Zito's goldfish disappears from the series after his death in "Down for the Count" and never reappears again, despite Crockett and others searching his apartment for clues in the episode after his death occurs.

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